Saturday, July 31, 2010

Macro Friday

It's time for Macro Friday again. This week's entry is in honor of yesterday's events...and could alternately be titled, "Dumb Things People Do". LOL. Errrr, maybe that should be "one of the dumbest things I've done".

It all started with this here epipen (my Macro Friday entry).

Alex was diagnosed last year with a peanut allergy and we therefore have epipens in the house. On Thursday, Alex had a peanut challenge and passed. GREAT NEWS! However, they told us to feed him peanut butter every day for the next five days and to watch him carefully for a reaction.

Friday we had a new babysitter coming to watch the kids. I pulled out the practice Epipen to demonstrate how it worked, in case Alex reacted to the peanut butter while I was at work .... only it wasn't the practice pen. It was the real deal! I accidentally shot myself in the thumb with the pen. And it hurt.... a lot... and the needle got stuck in the bone and wouldn't come out... and we had to call for an ambulance. And my heart was pounding, and the kids were screaming.... I so did not expect to spend my day in the ER.

Apparently it is pretty common for people to accidentally stick themselves with epipens. What's not as common is getting the needle stuck in the bone. What's also common is for people to LOSE their finger/thumb if they shoot themselves in that area. Yikes! Something about having tiny blood vessels in that area that constrict when injected and cut off blood supply to the surrounding tissues. I had a hard time believing the doctor that I had done something so serious. I called my brother (who works in an ER) and he confirmed that getting stuck in the thumb with an epipen can definitely kill the tissue.

I felt so grateful to wake up this morning and see that my thumb was nice and pink. It hurts like you wouldn't believe, but at least I won't have to figure out how to live without a thumb!!! I just have to survive three weeks of heavy duty antibiotics! In the meantime I am learning to hit the spacebar with my left rather than my right hand while typing, and am enjoying lots of couch time while loopy from percoset! Oh, and becoming acquainted with the throw up bucket. I don't think my body is liking the Keflex.